Moby Grape was a band brimming with talent. Every member of the group were lead vocalists, songwriters, and played an instrument very skilfully. This led to a catalogue filled with high quality songs, ditto performances, and lovely (and often intricate) vocal harmonies and arrangements.
The five members of Moby Grape were not cut from the same cloth. Perhaps it was their diversity that provided part of their magic. Jerry Miller (lead guitar, vocals), Bob Mosley (bass, vocals), Peter Lewis (guitar, vocals), Skip Spence (guitar, vocals) and Dan Stevenson (drums, vocals) came together in San Francisco in September 1966 from different locations and fairly different walks of life. What they had in common was a strong wish to make it, a desire to work together, and all their individual skills to write, sing, and play superbly.
While the band initially emerged from the city’s developing psychedelic music scene, they sounded different from the rest. They wrote short, catchy, and somewhat more aggressive songs built around jagged or jangly guitars, courtesy of the three-pronged guitar attack via Miller, Spence, and Lewis.
They played rock music filled with irresistible 60s pop hooks. Their songs were more than capable of packing a punch, yet they still managed to keep that certain chill San Francisco vibe in the mix. Their magnificent vocal arrangements had a big part to play in that. It was vocals from all corners with these guys – most memorably from the scarily soulful Mosley and the earnestly sweet-voiced Lewis.
Sadly, the group’s history is a tragic one. Their story is one filled with mismanagement, abuse, missed opportunities, foul play, and might-have-beens. They certainly had some levels of success, but this was accompanied by ongoing, decades-long legal disputes with their initial manager Matthew Katz.
The problems began shortly after the band’s formation. Katz has been involved from the start and was thought to have helped them, but it was later revealed that any contracts the band had signed were skewed in Katz’s favour. This eventually led him to insist on the ownership of the group’s name while also withholding royalties from them. Later on, Katz ended up with the group’s members rights to their own songs in a legal settlement that was made without the band’s knowledge. The continual challenges put a heavy strain on the band, whose first incarnation ended in 1969 when some members started to suffer mentally from the strain.
Katz would become notorious on the San Francisco scene after also making life hard for the likes of Jefferson Airplane and It’s A Beautiful Day.
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Fortunately Moby Grape reformed in 1971, although their challenges were far from gone. In fact, the band went through an incredible amount of stopping and starting again over the years, mostly due to business-related challenges. They are currently enjoying the longest uninterrupted spell of their career, having been active since 2006 and still being active as of the writing of this article (December 2023).
The music that the band produced was usually uplifting and melodic, giving few direct indications that things were challenging for them behind the scenes.
Their debut album was the self-titled Moby Grape, released on 6 June 1967. It was a real band showcase, with all members writing songs and singing lead and/or backing vocals throughout.
Production began in Los Angeles in March 1967. Produced by David Rubinson, it took just six weeks (11 March to 25 April), and $11,000, to record all thirteen tracks.
Hey Grandma was the first track on the album, written by the band’s lead guitarist Jerry Miller and drummer Don Stevenson. They usually wrote together, and while everybody in the band were songwriters, Miller and Stevenson would be responsible for some the band’s best known songs such as 8:05 (also from the first album) and Murder In My Heart For The Judge (from the 1968 album Wow).
Hey Grandma kicks off with the Grape’s trademark multi-guitar attack, showcasing the pounding rhythm section of Mosley and Stevenson. This gives the song the flair of a solid beat-based rocker of the type that was in vogue in 1964/65. As it gets going, the hooks in the riffs become more apparent, and with the multi-layered vocal arrangements in the chorus especially, the transformation to an infectious earworm of the psychedelic era is complete.
Hey Grandma, you’re so young
Your old man’s just a boy
Been a long time this time (pow-pow-pow)
Been a long time this time (pow-pow-pow)
Been a long time this time round, this time round
Everything is upside down, upside down
Sure looking good
You’re looking so good
You’re sure looking good
The harmonising in the chorus especially is a showcase of their vocal arrangements, containing several interwoven vocal melodies. This develops through the track, which ends with an infinitely rising fade of chorused vocal harmonies and guitar riffing. The track is an energy bomb of multiple powerful riffs, a multitude of hooks, layered harmony vocals, and pure energy.
For 1967, this certainly was an intense album opener. It stunned listeners into submission, leaving them gasping for air – and that was only the first track of an amazing record, at a short two and a half minutes.
With its catchy hooks and a blend of psychedelic rock and folk elements, Hey Grandma became an anthem for those seeking personal growth and liberation. But what are the lyrics really about? I’m honestly not even sure that the writers know, in a literal sense.
The opening lines “Hey Grandma, you’re so young / Your old man’s just a boy” seem paradoxical if taken at face value, suggesting that the grandmother is youthful while her partner (the old man) is still a boy. While some of this could fit counterculture thinking about old souls in young bodies or vice versa, the song is actually all about the Haight-Ashbury scene in San Francisco around 1966-67. At the time, long “granny dresses” were very popular among young hippie girls. The song’s title and first verse is a nod to them. A lot of them were runaway girls, and those dresses were cheap, plentiful, and – as luck would have it, given those first two criteria – in fashion.
More than anything, Hey Grandma is meant to take listeners on a journey of self-discovery and spiritual awakening. Drug-taking was a normal part of that at the time. However, money was tight for many of the young hippies, leading many of the locals without funds to use whatever was cheap and available to get high. The song’s last verse mentions Robitussin (cough syrup) and elderberry wine. The line “Well, I got high this time” reflects the chase for those highs which sometimes were more successful than other times.
The song also mentions a Fillmore Slim. This was a neighbourhood character – blues musician (his most successful record was You’ve Got the Nerve of A Brass Monkey), hustler, raconteur. And pimp. In the documentary American Pimp, he estimated that he had over 9,000 prostitutes working for him throughout his pimping career. His wardrobe featured sharkskin suits, alligator shoes, and diamond watches, and he cruised Fillmore Street in a new Cadillac.
SF freak scene was on my mind
Fillmore Slim is just a-wasting time
Well I got high this time (pow-pow-pow)
Well I got high this time (pow-pow-pow)
Well I got high this time round, this time round
Everything is upside down, upside down
Cause your looking good
You’re looking so good
You’re sure looking good
The counterculture movement that was chronicled on several of the album’s songs was a broad-ranging social movement that had slowly emerged in the years leading up to that time. It focused on an alternative approach to life that manifested itself in a variety of activities, lifestyles, and artistic expressions, including recreational drug use, communal living, political protests, casual sex, and folk and rock music. The movement was perhaps best encapsulated by the phrase “turn on, tune in, drop out,” coined by the American psychologist Timothy Leary, who demonstrated contempt for authority and championed the use of LSD and other psychoactive drugs. Adherents advocated freedom of expression and a distrust of those in power.
By 1967, the movement had grown to become a widespread cultural phenomenon, resulting in the so-called “summer of love” when San Francisco became the cultural capital of the western world with gigantic music festivals and hippie gatherings in the area. Moby Grape were around to provide part of the soundtrack for this, even opening proceedings at the Monterey Pop Festival that June.
The Moby Grape record found its audience and did quite well for a relatively unknown band. It managed to get critical acclaim as well as commercial success, peaking at #24 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in September 1967.
Several songs from the album, including Hey Grandma, Fall On You, Indifference, 8:15, and Omaha all deserved to be hits. Who knows if this is what led to the rather unique publicity stunt of releasing all of these five tracks as singles from the album on the same day – incidentally the exact same day as the album was released, on 6 June 1967. To make matters worse, all five records were issued with a picture sleeve showing the exact same photo as the album cover.
People were confused, and with good reason. This way of releasing new singles is generally regarded as a very bad way of doing it, both then and now. Instead of focusing on one specific song and gearing everything towards pushing that as far as it can go, you end up giving focus to none of them. This was an odd move, especially when the album was coming into its own as the preferred way of listening. It even led the band to being perceived as being over-hyped.
It is tempting to quote from the press release regarding these releases: “Columbia Records is taking the unprecedented step of simultaneously releasing five singles by Moby Grape as part of a gigantic campaign to make the entire country Moby Grape conscious. At the same time the label is also releasing an album by the San Francisco group, which, before signing with Columbia, was sought after by as many as seven record labels.”
The press release goes on to detail the “special party and concert” at the Avalon Ballroom, for which Columbia was flying in radio, retail, and Columbia personnel, and makes the ridiculous claim that “the label is convinced that each of the ten sides in the initial singles release has the potential of making it to the top of the national charts.” It details release plans, the creation of a “Moby Grape Manual” to be issued to sales and promotion execs, the fact that “all correspondence and news releases concerning the Grape will be printed on special paper with their logo as the letterhead,” and much more about the hype surrounding this release.
The promotional stunt failed horribly. The over-the-top promotional campaign was widely considered to have killed the band’s commercial prospects. Only Hey Grandma and Omaha charted, at #127 and #88 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100. This was a big disappointment to everybody, especially given the obvious quality of the songs on offer. But, with airplay split between 10 tracks, no hit single was possible.
This led to a backlash against the huge Columbia hype machine, and Don Stevenson giving ‘the finger’ on the album cover artwork (later airbrushed out) certainly didn’t help the band’s retail prospects. Sadly this ended up impacting the momentum of the incredible studio album as well.
This was the backdrop when Moby Grape appeared at the legendary Monterey International Pop Festival on 16 June 1967. It might be part of the reason that the appearance failed to set their career alight the way it did for many others. Was the backlash effect still there? Or maybe the audience was focusing on the upcoming performances of bigger names? At least their performance of Hey Grandma got special attention as the very first song to be performed at the beginning of the festival.
Unlike some artists and bands who had a backlash of sorts against them at the time, Moby Grape were able to put this behind them and continued having a career. They would go on to record four more albums – all of them good, but none would ever quite capture that spirit found on their debut.
The band has kept going in some form on the live circuit, though, and keep performing entertaining shows where they do credit to the old classics.
Over the years, the praises and songs of Moby Grape have been sung by everyone from R.E.M. and the Black Crowes to the Move and Robert Plant, who has continually cited them as a big influence.
The Move covered Hey Grandma on their self-titled first album. More recently, the track was included in the soundtrack to the 2005 Sean Penn-Nicole Kidman film The Interpreter, as well as being covered in 2009 by the Black Crowes on Warpaint Live.
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